


Feel

by Khanofallorcs



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied Past Adrigami, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26314906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khanofallorcs/pseuds/Khanofallorcs
Summary: A smarter son, Félix might tell Adrien, would read the signs. But a good son, he tells himself, sticks with his heart; and with his father.Whatever anyone else says, he owes it to his mother to at least try, right?
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38
Collections: September 2020 - Fulfill A Prompt





	Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NOIRequin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOIRequin/gifts).



> This is a gift for the wonderful [Noirequin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NOIRequin), who at one point asked someone in the Miraculous Fanworks server to 'pretty please, write an Adrien-centered songfic based on ["Feel" by Robbie Williams ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9M0VWyfDx0) '. Well, here it is, hope you enjoy it <3
> 
> Special thanks to the lovely [sagansjagger ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagansjagger) for Beta reading this for me, and helping it come together!

Somewhere in the background,Chat Noir is vaguely aware that the police are setting up a perimeter. There’s technicians collecting samples, and taking note of the equipment still strewn about after Hawk Moth’s final battle. There’s chatter, whispers, raised voices, and the shuffling of dozens of feet.

Chat Noir can only keep staring at the reflective surface of the glass.

The police might be watching him, or thinking of asking him questions about what happened. But he isn’t thinking of it now; his thoughts were a whirl of activity hours ago, a cacophony of questions, half-thoughts, and recriminations, but now there’s only radio static.

When Ladybug squeezes his hand, he can only wonder _why_. 

Why _him_?

**Come and hold my hand**

**I wanna contact the living**

**Not sure I understand**

**This role I've been given**

The negotiation with Gabriel, although that term might be rather generous, has not been going well. Or, rather, it has gone the way most of the talks with his father have gone recently: Adrien will voice concerns or a request, and Gabriel will shoot it down and tell him to focus on the things that matter. There’s no shouting; it won’t help Adrien and Gabriel doesn’t need it to make his point. So much for being able to go to Marinette’s birthday, it seems.

By now, Adrien can’t really deny that these talks take a lot out of him. They really haven’t been working out for him. Reaching out to Gabriel in general has been getting harder every time. Gabriel himself has become harder as the years roll by: more likely to criticise, even more difficult to please.

A smarter son, Félix might tell Adrien, would read the signs. But a good son, he tells himself, sticks with his heart; and with his father.

Whatever anyone else says, he owes it to his mother to at least try, right?

  
  


**I sit and talk to God**

**And He just laughs at my plans**

**My head speaks a language**

**I don't understand**

Plagg tells him that it’s not a good sign that he clings to people like that. That all they need is to tell him they love him and he’ll bend over backwards to please them.

Adrien has the rebuttal at the ready: he’s got a legion of fans, and he keeps some distance from almost all of them. He’s been getting better, slowly, at enforcing his boundaries. And respecting them in others.

They don’t need to bring up Ladybug for both of them to know she’s part of this discussion.

Perhaps there’s something to be said about Plagg’s comment that Adrien’s stuck living his life for people who haven’t really been part of it for a while. Certainly, the relationship would be different if Gabriel had disapproved of it.

But the kwami just isn’t seeing a simple thing: Kagami loves him, so how can he not keep trying?

**And I need to feel real love**

**And a life ever after**

**I cannot give it up**

  
  


His father cancelling their planned dinner to attend a meeting (along with Nathalie) shouldn’t be a relief. But as Adrien stares unblinking at the massive portrait in Gabriel’s atelier, trying to keep the tears away, that thought’s just background noise.

If his mother were truly here, and not just an oversized painting flecked in gold, would she know what to say? Would she console him? Insist that he hadn’t meant to hurt Kagami? Postpone telling Gabriel that one of his business partners would have an excuse to be mad at him?

His father had always said that Adrien is a bit too much like Emilie. But, really, is he? Everyone loved his mother, and she certainly loved people, fully, honestly, not in half-measures or hoping to fall out of love with someone else.

For a moment he thinks that maybe they were right to keep him here all those years; clearly he isn’t ready for the wider world. If he thinks it more than one second Plagg would talk his ear off, as would Nino, and even Ladybug (though she only knows vague fragments of the story).

Perhaps it’s due to his state, but he’s tempted to reach out to her (his father would kill him for scuffing such a one-of-a-kind). He pulls back his hand, until he notices one part of the painting that seems to have been touched before. He briefly contemplated that his father wouldn’t tolerate such imperfections on display, until he remembers that his father probably stared into every centimeter of the painting every day; if Adrien acutely feels her absence, Gabriel lives it.

No one could have touched it but him.

Adrien wonders how silly this is, to brush fingers across a painting and imagine it alive. But with little to lose and no one to judge him, he indulges, and runs his finger across the wide frame before bringing it to rest in the same place his father has done.

After all, perhaps this would give him the insight into his father he’d been missing?

  
  


I **just wanna feel real love**

**Feel the home that I live in**

**I got too much love**

**Running through my veins**

**To go to waste**

  
  


The longer he stares at that glass case, the less he sees. The tears haven’t started falling yet: in their rush to be the first to leave his eyes they have gotten stuck on each other. But if he moves a hair he’ll jostle them and they’ll be free.

He barely even breathes.

His clawed hand still lingers on the cold window where his mother lies stuck like a pinned insect.

For a second he thinks of moving aside the barrier between them and taking her hand the way he’d dreamed of doing for years. But that’s perhaps the dumbest thought he has had all day. What could be more pointless than reaching out and pretending she’s alive?

When Ladybug reaches to wrap an arm around him he collapses, sobbing and retching.

What had it all been for?

  
  


**I just wanna feel real love**

**In a life ever after**

**There's a hole in my soul**

**You can see it in my face**

**It's a real big place**

In his mind he’d buried his mother on the anniversary of her disappearance years ago. He had thought it hard to say goodbye to someone without knowing what happened to them. It’s much harder now when he does know.

Her husband and Nathalie aren’t with him, and part of him regrets not giving them the chance to say their farewells to her. But bitterly, he thinks they had it, every day for years. Would they have accepted it now?

Mercifully, he’s cried himself stupid for days so right now no one can record him bawling for the mother he’s lost twice. He knows that when they look at him now, they’re not thinking of him as the son of Emilie Agreste.

He’s glad that Marinette’s standing between him and his aunt. He’s grateful that she’s been there the last few days, when there’s been screaming matches, accusations. But he can’t help wondering why Marinette’s still here.

Why is she at his side when she should be getting away before the name Agreste can devour her future, too?

**Come and hold my hand**

**I wanna contact the living**

On their last patrol together, Ladybug insists that none of it is his fault. She seems to believe it, too. Not that it matters any more.

Chat Noir was a role given to him. He’d loved it from the first second he’d transformed. He fought villains to save Paris.

And now there are no more villains to fight. Paris is safe.

Or at least it will be, when he returns Plagg to his friends. Which is why that night, long past midnight, he asks Plagg to bring his ring back to Ladybug.

The kwami pleads, argues, and screams. But he, too, will be better off. For a while, Adrien is worried that the little god will come back with the ring when he isn’t looking. But he hates the way Hawk Moth forced Nooroo to obey his orders, and no matter what, Adrien _won’t_ do that to Plagg.

After a few hours of looking out of the window he’s jumped out of so many times, Adrien’s as sure as he can be that Plagg’s not coming back.

This lets him go back to not sleeping, and staring at the white ceiling, left to wonder.

Would Ladybug be there at his mother’s funeral tomorrow?

  
  


**Not sure I understand**

**This role I've been given**

  
  


He’s lost count after the tenth time that he’s fiddled with his empty ring finger. The uncovered patch of skin burns coldly, and worse each time he thinks of it.

Marinette must notice his restlessness because she grabs the offending hand with her own. That somehow makes the ache more bearable.

She’s still holding his hand when Emilie’s body is put into the ground for the last time, and one by one people he only vaguely knows come to wish him condolences he only distantly hears.

He must have been stuck staring into the void for another hour at least before he realizes that Marinette can’t leave without him letting go.

He turns to apologize to her, but she pre-empts his apology before putting his hand between both of hers, and telling him she’d see him soon.

He only manages to keep the scoff until she leaves earshot.

How could she be so sure of that?

**Not sure I understand**

**Not sure I understand**

It’s only when he turns to leave himself, that he’s cognizant of the absence of the itching on his finger, and when he turns it over to inspect, there’s a familiar silver band around it, heavy with the weight of words that don’t need to be said.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a joy to write, but it wouldn't have been possible without the support of the lovely folks from the _Miraculous Fanworks_ Discord; they organized this whole exchange, and the writing sprints we did together really kept me focused on the task. If you feel like you'd like to take part in exchanges like these, gush about Miraculous Ladybug fanfic, or just to find a welcoming community which can help with anything from beta reading to giving baking advice, feel free to join us [here](https://discord.gg/mlfanworks).


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